Video: 'CISPA pushed by spy & tech companies for profit'

David Seaman, journalist and host of The DL Show, talks in depth about the latest threat to internet freedom and privacy, The Cyber Intelligence Sharing Protection Act, or CISPA.

Don Hankins

RT interviewed Seaman in the video above and some valuable information has been passed on.

Recently U.S. Congress has attempted to sneak through legislation that could censor and change the face of the internet as we know it, all in the name of "national security."

Earlier in the year it was the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which threatened the free internet in the U.S.A., but a huge online and street campaign managed to put an end to both acts.

Now it is the Cyber Intelligence Sharing Protection Act, or CISPA that is threatening the basic privacy of internet users, not only in the U.S.A, but possibly elsewhere in the world.

If CISPA gets through, no online activity will be safe any longer. Your emails can be monitored, your activity online can be tracked and even if you do no real harm, you can be threatened by the law, and have absolutely no recourse in the law courts, due to the litigation immunity offered by CISPA.

With SOPA there was a huge outcry from both the public and the major internet companies, like Wikipedia, Reddit, Facebook and Google.

CISPA on the other hand has the support of key tech companies, for example Microsoft, Facebook and Google. Plus it has more than 100 co-sponsors in Congress.

While the White House has expressed concern over CISPA, they also expressed concern about the NDAA and other recent bills, and they went through with no problem.

The interviewer asks Seaman why companies like Facebook and Google are supporting CISPA and what is in it for them. Seaman explained that when you gather potentially valuable data as a (sleasy) business model, you can then sell it on to the government and make a huge profit. With the litigation immunity offered, they can quite literally do what they want.

Avaaz and Change.Org are running petitions in an attempt to stop CISPA and Demand Progress have a petition going to tell Facebook to withdraw its support of CISPA and another to fight CISPA itself.

It is just hoped that these petitions can have an affect on the decision made in Congress and put CISPA where it belongs, in the recycle bin.